Epidius Thorell, 1877

Tang, Guo, Yin, Changmin, Peng, Xianjin & Griswold, Charles, 2009, Six Crab Spiders Of The Subfamily Stephanopinae From Southeast Asia (Araneae: Thomisidae), Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 57 (1), pp. 39-50 : 42

Epidius Thorell, 1877

Epidius Thorell, 1877: 492 ; Simon, 1897: 10; Millot, 1941: 65. Cupa Strand , in Bösenberg & Strand, 1906 (Song & Zhu, 1997:

23, misidentified)

Type species. – Epidius longipalpis Thorell, 1877 , by original designation.

Diagnosis. – Small to medium size, Head area narrow, eye tubercles of each side continuous. Chelicera with 3 promarginal and 2 retromarginal teeth, the larger retromarginal one bifid. Legs slender with many spines. Epigyne usually with an atrium and a pair of posterior sclerotized plates. Male tibia with VTA and 4–6 macrosetae in a row.

Distribution. – Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Java, Sumatra, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, China.

Remarks. – This genus is composed of 9 species from Africa and Southeast Asia. Epidius is a group of poorly known special crab spiders and differs from other genera greatly by their general appearance and genital organs. This genus is similar to Sanmenia in the shape of embolus and conductor of male palp, but can be separated from the latter by: body usually light yellow to gray without markings (gray to grayish-brown with some black-brown stripes or markings in Sanmenia ), epigyne usually with a pair of sclerotized plates posteriorly (without those in Sanmenia ) and male palp with only VTA (with both VTA and RTA in Sanmenia ). After checking the type specimens of Cupa gongi Song & Kim, 1992 , (the only representative of the genus Cupa recorded from China), it is found that Cupa gongi Song & Kim, 1992 , was misidentified as a representative of the genus Cupa . The male palp of Cupa gongi has a spatulate VTA and a row of macrosetae, which are the typical diagnostic characters of the genus Epidius . Cupa gongi Song & Kim, 1992 , should be transferred to the genus Epidius as E. gongi (Song & Kim, 1992) . Therefore, there is no real representative of Cupa found in China now.